This article was originally published at Oxstein Labs.

It’s a new day in America. With economic cutbacks mixing with technology advancing at light speed, most people are wondering how to keep up.  Throw in an exodus of jobs and people only working at companies for 2 to 3 years instead of 20 and we see a totally different job market than ever before in history.  Like it or not, everyone is a marketer now, even kids.

In the first three weeks of this school year my house was presented with fundraisers from schools and PTA’s for coupon books, a jog-a-thon and selling mattresses.  That’s not a joke, the high school had a mattress selling fundraiser which included pimping out kids to go door to door with flyers and post yard signs announcing “Up to 60% off” of mattresses.  This is how far our country has fallen.

I spoke with teachers about this and they hate it, but said “what can we do?”  Remember when teachers taught school?  Now they are forced to be sales managers directing kids from Kindergarten up to 12th grade to sell crap in order to buy school supplies.  Your kid is forced to do this after you’ve already spent money buying your own kids school supplies and paying taxes that were initially allocated for education.  Teachers and kids are now marketers and salespeople who have quotas to strive for, though they aren’t held accountable for missing them.

Do you remember when the police were mostly fighting crime?  You know, protecting and serving?  Have you noticed that your town feels more like you’re under surveillance than ever before?  Many cities have seen cutbacks lead to  laying off police officers.  The result has been that cops have increased ticket quotas to hit like sales goals.  They are threatened with losing their jobs because of cutbacks in their departments if they don’t make their quotas. These days you are a potential revenue source, a customer, before you are a citizen.

Though I don’t know how to help police officers and school teachers out of their delimma without reallocating federal funds from the defense budget to education and police departments, I know what workers can do. Employees need to realize that even when you don’t own a business, you are now an entrepreneur who must market her services.

If you go to a job interview with the same exact skills as another candidate who has online profiles and content showing off her expertise and you don’t, who do you think is going to get hired?  The other person will land the job simply because they are showing their value in the industry 24/7 online for any recruiter or HR person to review while you are only telling a job history on a resume.

The good news is that there are more ways than ever to build your personal brand to market yourself.  Here are the top three personal branding techniques that every person needs to use:

1. Have an optimized LinkedIn profile.  Just because you’re on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you’re in good shape.  Is your bio full of searchable keywords for recruiters?  Do you have a video?  Do you have recommendations?  Have you recommended others?  Do you have a Twitter feed adding real time content tpo your profile page? Are you answering questions in the Q&A area?  Are you participating in conversations happening in the Groups aligned with your industry?  If you need help with this look no further than Mike O’Neill and Lori Ruff‘s book, “Rock the World with Your Online Presence.”

2.  Start a blog. Blogs are where people share their interests, their passions and their expertise.  If you like to write, then use WordPress.  If you prefer short snippets of writing, photos and videos, you can blog on Posterous or Tumblr easier than you can dial a phone.

3.  Comment on the blogs that are the most popular in your industry.  Search AllTop or BlogSearch.Google.com with keywords used in your industry to find the best blogs.  Leave comments on articles where you have something of value to add to the conversation.  This can help you to build a relationship with experts in your field and it leaves a permanent comment that is like a sales person working 24/7 to share the fact that you have valuable skills with the world.

The 21st century is a time when you will lose ground in your career if you do not create a personal brand and market yourself.  Like it or not, it’s time to be the best marketer of you that you can imagine.

It’s not news that how you think the world is defines how it is for you.  What’s amazing is how many of us learn this, but continue to go through life thinking that our way is THE way.  Is your glass half full or half empty?

With the unending drum beat about the economy “crisis,” pounding through our heads it seems like a good time to revisit this.  Humans are emotional creatures that react to people’s comments on perceived circumstances more often than being proactive in choosing how to create their lives.  This phenomenon lends itself to leading us astray based on our past beliefs and current assessments of our lives.

There is no doubt that the U.S. economy is slow and translates into hard times for a large number of it’s citizens.  That said, they sky isn’t falling, just like it wasn’t falling on September 11, 2001.  Unfortunate events yes, but extreme fearful reactions just make up mental suffering.  They are blips on the screen when you view the full scope of your life.

Money is a very funny thing.  These days it’s mostly digital bytes on a screen.  And economies based on money are totally made up conversations.

Who decided to create interest rates, compound interest, zero interest loans with huge interest back ends, stock derivatives, hedge funds, money market accounts, savings accounts, certificate of deposit rates, consumer price indexes, etc.?  They’re all made up structures, which can be changed, not laws of the universe.

Money is nothing but a mental agreement where we all decided that U.S. Treasury green backs have value but Monopoly money doesn’t have value even though they’re both just pieces of paper.  You could argue that money is backed by valuable minerals like gold and silver, but who decided they were valuable?

Do you know who decided that diamonds were valuable? De Beers Diamond company and their amazing PR team who intentionally lied to the public creating a perception that diamonds are the rarest gem on Earth.  If your wife perceives that diamonds are valuable, though it’s not true, then you’ll pay 3 months salary for one and she’ll be thrilled because she thinks her perception is THE real perception.

We somehow created an extra $9 billion a month for 5 years and counting for an Iraq invasion and occupation, we found $700 billion to bail out Wall Street, and over decades we haven’t been able to allocate a few million dollars to improve America’s dilapidated schools.

It’s a matter of perception and priorities.  Regardless of what you  think of the way our social systems operate, money seems to be created when it’s needed.

Before selling my house a couple of years ago I remember thinking how crazy it was that a 2,500 sq ft house built in 1992 should be valued at over $500,000.  I was right.  The market was way over valued based on dumb reactions to perceptions real estate buyers had.

They were reacting to a perception that housing values would go up forever and they were missing out if they didn’t have rental property in addition to their own homes.  The appraisal on that house is surely lower today than it was 3 years ago.  It’s the same house.  The only thing that’s different is public perception.

Today many stocks are extremely undervalued just like a few years ago real estate was overvalued.  The market reacts illogically every day to everchanging perceptions. It’s nothing new.

So take a deep breath, smile , and spend more time creating the life you enjoy rather than following the negative news of the day.  As all things do, this too shall pass and your glass will be half full or half empty based on your perception.  What’s it gonna be?

Yesterday Alan Greenspan told congress `That is precisely the reason I was shocked because I’d been going for 40 years or more with very considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well.” This is a great example of how we are blindly influenced by the way our brains make meaning in the world.   What we consider to be evidence is just our mental filter looking for agreements to prevailing ways of thinking.

In the best selling book Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, a similar example of this is given.  Every day that goes by with a turkey being fed and taken care of is another piece of evidence that life is good and will only get better.  But in reality, every day that goes by is bringing that turkey closer to it’s death. Every day is great up until the day before Thanksgiving when all that evidence seems to have been false evidence appearing real.

The same can be said in reverse.  How many times has your life not seemed like it was going in a very good direction, but over time it got much better?  Haven’t we all worked dead end jobs, been in bad relationships or had money trouble?  For most of us these circumstances shifted for the better as time passed.

A friend of mine is a fan of the British childrens book series about Tin Tin.  I’m told that he has a saying about how things are a certain way …until they’re not.  That’s the truth in a nutshell.  Our relationships, health, emotions, world views, beliefs and finances can turn on a dime for better or worse.  And that’s a reality that we deny in a massive consumer culture where we are told that anything can be had for the right price.

The Alan Greenspan example is interesting because in hindsight regular people like us can tell that allowing people to have mortgages they can’t afford, allowing banks to charge 30% interest that can’t be repaid, allowing investors to gamble by buying short sale stocks betting on which companies will fail, and many other practices that led to the current financial crisis are pretty insane.  Somehow though, Greenspan and the other expert economists couldn’t see this train coming down the track because everything looked like it was going great…until suddenly it wasn’t.

A great lesson we can learn from this is that everything we believe to be true and lasting may change overnight.  Another friend of mine was in the first September 11 crisis. Yep, the coup d’etat in Chile in 1973. The one that put the dictator Pinochet in power, who is now being mentioned again because John McCain met with him.

My friend was working for the government that was overthrown and within 2 weeks most of his friends were dead and he barely made it out of the country alive because neighbors were all turning each other in out of fear that the military would come after them.  Chilean’s never thought that could ever happen to them just like we never thought tax payer money would ever bailout hugely successful investment banks.

That friend’s name is Julio Ollala and today he is known as one of the grandfathers of the coaching profession, the founder of Newfield Network and is known internationally as a master at helping people transform their lives.  Great things can come out of the ashes of perceived crises.

It’s good to remember that we blindly influence ourselves when we believe that we know how the world is or how the future will play out.  We don’t, and it’s dangerously arrogant and naive when we play that game, as we’re all prone to do at one time or another.  This is one way we practice marketing on ourselves.

In acknowledging that we really don’t know a lot, and what we think we know is liable to change without notice, we move towards the peace that comes from acceptance and gratitude for how today is …until it isn’t.

If you have not seen this video, please take the time to watch it.  This will explain how we have gotten to this point.  Have you ever thought why there is more debt in this world than there is money to repay it? This video will explain it all and more…

Paul Grignon’s 47-minute animated presentation of “Money as Debt” tells in very simple and effective graphic terms what money is and how it is being created. It is an entertaining way to get the message out. The Cowichan Citizens Coalition and its “Duncan Initiative” received high praise from those who previewed it. I recommend it as a painless but hard-hitting educational tool and encourage the widest distribution and use by all groups concerned with the present unsustainable monetary system in Canada and the United States.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Have you watched your local nightly news lately?  Probably not if you’re like most Americans under the age of 61, but you’ll still get my point.  I’m guessing you’ve watched more financial news in the last month than usual in reaction to fear around money, stocks and the economy in general.

I accidentally saw the first few minutes of local news recently and noticed that it looked just like it did when I was a kid and my parents watched it.  They have the same formula as always: An intro with visuals that include flashing police car or fire truck lights and an audio track of a reporter talking in that ridiculous reporter-sing-song voice telling you that the content they’re sharing is VERY important and significant.  If they’re lucky they can splice some security camera footage into the piece too for an extra scary effect.

I’m sure they still cover the weather at exactly 17 minutes after the hour too, but for the sake of this post we’ll stick with the intro.  News, whether it is on broadcast or cable television, on the web or in newspapers, generally leads with some story aimed at reminding you that the world is not a safe place.

It’s probably even a little worse since they created the oft-used phrase, “In a post-9/11 world…”  The truth is that we don’t live in a country where suicide bombers are blowing up cafes and you’re more likely to get hit by lightning or win the lottery without a ticket than to be harmed by a terrorist in America.

This truth is exactly the same now as it was 5 years or 50 years before 9/11.  That’s just a fact and it has nothing to do with how much our president has or has not protected us or that you aren’t allowed to carry a regular sized can of shaving cream on to an airplane anymore.

It has to do with the low number of terrorists who have the inclination or means to harm us.  We don’t live in Columbia or Israel where terrorist violence is a reality. We live in America where impoverished drug addicts with guns are actually a bigger threat than terrorists.  And when was the last time you or someone you love was car jacked by a crack addict or directly threatened by a terrorist?  That’s my point.

Back to the media, it’s not that they like to scare people.  (At least I hope not.)  It’s because consumers are reactionary creatures that respond to emotional content.  That’s also why they always ask the asinine question of, “How do you feel?” to the woman whose son got killed an hour ago in a car accident or the guy who made the 3 point shot to win the basketball game.

Have these interviewees ever given a surprising answer even once in the history of the world?  Nope.  Guess what, the guy whose house burned down says “I’m in shock and upset that I lost everything, but I’m grateful that my family made it out in time.”  Surprise!  You never here him say, “I’m excited and going to Disneyland on the insurance money.  It’s a godsend that my shack is gone and I can cash in!”

The fact that many news consumers forget is that the news is a product.  Therefore, if you study advertising you’ll understand why the product of news is sold with the same methods as selling the product of beer or the product of voting for a politician.

Consumers are emotional creatures that unconsciously react to advertising.  Add to this fact that people react more strongly to negative advertising than positive advertising.  If my news program makes you afraid by making you think crime is up it concurrently attracts you to watch my news because you think I’ll give you information on what’s happening that will make you feel safer.

I create the problem that you should be afraid while positioning myself as your answer to feel safer.  It’s the same schtick for self help gurus who tell you they have the answer for your health, relationship and money issues.  The day you feel safe is the day you lose dependence on being a daily news consumer and the day you believe your life is not broken you lose the desire to spend money on books, CDs and seminars to fix yourself.

Ironically, crime in America has consistently been going down for well over a decade even though most people who regularly consume news think it’s always going up.  If you see a petty crime reported as the lead story every night the images of flashing lights repeated daily is what your brain remembers.

Perception is reality when you’re being blindly influenced.  If they want good ratings they need to give you a perceived threat so you’ll tune in to “stay informed.”  It may be worthwhile to question how informed you really become blindly consuming what others determine is “news.”

Naomi Klein explains how the Shock Doctrine is being played out in the current economic crisis.  Disaster capitalism has come home to America.  Don’t buy into the fear, this too shall pass.  It’s a good time to remember to follow common sense and fight the impulse to react emotionally.

When you consume news remember that it too is a product being marketed.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Why are we listening to financial “experts”?  Have you noticed that all of the so-called experts on television and in print are the same people who did not notice or warn anyone about the current financial situation?  So what gives them the expertise to now give out advice on how to repair it?

Before you follow the advice of the talking heads on TV it may be a good idea to check their track records first.  This video is funny though it’s also very educational in explaining how some aspects of the financial markets market their dodgy products to consumers like you and me.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Something very cool seems to be happening in politics.  It seems like the old politics of fear aren’t working as well as they used to in the current presidential election campaigns.  Maybe people have finally been so pummeled with lies in such a short period of time that they’re less inclined to swallow a mouthful of scare tactics.

Last week there was a lot of talk of how the McCain campaign was focused on making voters afraid of Barack Obama, even to the point of inciting crowds to shout racial epithets.  The thing is, this didn’t help his poll numbers and probably didn’t attract new voters.  It just made the rallies sound like elementary school bullies and their pals taunting and booing on cue.  This leads to the question of why today’s politics seem so antiquated and cartoon-like.

Lets be honest, if a little explosion happened that could be traced back to a terrorist, foreign or domestic, politicians may be able to work the shock doctrine to their advantage as they’ve done for decades.  We just saw the shock doctrine work with the mortgage crisis and stock market crisis allowing the government to use a problem-reaction-solution strategy to partially nationalize and acquire banks and insurance companies.  But even then, Americans may not be so quick to roll over. With the current economic crisis people seem to be more angry than afraid for a change.

It’s interesting how a company laying people off is a crisis for workers but a “restructuring” for management.  Is this an economic restructuring or a crisis?  Who is benefiting from the restructuring?

So why do scare tactics work better than issues in a crisis and in a political campaign?   Have you noticed that the more a person is married to a belief system (Democrats tax and spend or Republicans are the party for business)  the more zealously and easily he reacts to politicians and talk show hosts pointing fingers?  Interestingly, many times these belief systems run contrary to facts.

Seriously, why to adults act like mindless silly children at political rallies and conventions? Psychologically what is happening is that people are reverting back to being children who naively thought their parents were superhuman.  We see this is fundamentalist religious beliefs also, but that is too big a topic to include here.  The relationship is either like adults acting like young children treating the government like a parental god who can fix everything or adults acting like teenagers treating the government like an idiot parent who can do nothing right.

The main answer to the question of why people are so easily manipulated in politics is actually a biological one.  Under normal circumstances humans do the majority of their thinking in the frontal lobes of the brain where critical thinking is king.  But when we’re under stress we think from the rear areas of the brain where the limbic system rules.

The amygdala and other portions of the brain that have been our primary areas of thinking for much longer than the frontal lobe are ruled by emotion and the drive for short term gain.  Because of this, when we most need our critical thinking we don’t use it.

This type of thinking was great in primitive times when stress was related to food, shelter and sex.  In today’s world where our stress is over money, health and relationships, which have long term impacts, we’re predisposed to make bad decisions most of the time.  The fact that most people jump out of the stock market as it goes down even when historically we know that it goes back up and the golden rule is to buy low and sell high is the best example of this.  For more information on how and why our brains deceive us most often read the book Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind.

In respect to politics we may be in a time of ‘fear fatigue’ from constant warnings of real and imagined threats the last eight years.  In reality, we are hurt and killed most often by unperceived threats like car accidents than from perceived threats like terrorists. Finally, the politics of fear may be losing and the public may be gaining from this circumstance.

The next time a politician goes for your vote with scare tactics, race baiting, or fear mongering remember to stop, take a deep breath, relax and do a little frontal lobe critical thinking.  Remember how many times this record has been played before and how the leaders promising security did not deliver it or even raised your anxiety levels after they were elected.  Both you and your country will be better for it.

It’s already being prophesized that the next financial meltdown wave will be focused on credit card debt.

The abuse of credit cards by both lenders and borrowers has been well documented for awhile.  Since most of the population blindly racks up credit card debt with little awareness around the pitfalls of being on the giving end of compound interest, I had to add a post on Maxed Out.

It’s a blessing that someone made a documentary explaining the predatory lending practices executed by some of the biggest names in banking.  I highly recommend renting this film as well as reading  Dave Ramsey’s Total Money Makeover book, taking Dave’s Financial Peace University course (The cost is almost nothing and it’s invaluable) along with listening to Dave’s daily radio show either online, on terrestrial radio or watching it on cable TV. Dave is one the people interviewed in the film and diving into his advice is your next step after watching the movie.

If I could change one thing in my financial life it would have been to have learned about Dave Ramsey sooner in life.  The only thing that could have come close would have been to have someone else explain how to handle money as simply and effectively as he does.  When I saw Dave Ramsey on 60 minutes a few years ago and read Total Money Makeover it changed my financial habits for the better and forever.  You can’t put a price on financial peace and it only costs a little time and focus to make it happen.

So, back to Maxed Out.  Here’s the skinny on what it’s about:

Maxed Out takes viewers on a journey deep inside the American style of debt, where things seem fine as long as the minimum monthly payment arrives on time. With coverage that spans from small American towns all the way to the White House, the film shows how the modern financial industry really works, explains the true definition of “preferred customer” and tells us why the poor are getting poorer while the rich keep getting richer. Hilarious, shocking and incisive, Maxed Out paints a picture of a national nightmare which is all too real for most of us. Great for college students.

Click here to view the embedded video.